Releasing Those We Love to God
We read the “Abraham almost kills Isaac” story in church today, and I have thoughts. Mostly on what this Genesis story says about releasing those we love to God.
Mother, her children, and God
When my mother was a young widow, she had her children baptized. She had returned to her native Mississippi where she’d given birth to her last child. Prior to the baptism, she spent hours on her knees asking for the strength to actually give her children over to God. That’s what baptism was: trusting God to take her most beloveds successfully through life. Pair this with her husband having just died in a violent train wreck. Would you trust a God to protect these children from random harm? One can only admire her insistence that she needed to do this thing.
Abraham wasn’t so different from my mom. Life—in the form of his jealous wife—had already stripped him of one son. Ishmael, sent away with Hagar. Can we imagine how tightly Abraham held onto the remaining son? Especially since God told him to listen to Sarah and send his son Ishmael away. How would a call to release Isaac to God sound to him?
When God calls us to release those we love
The figures in the Bible are exactly like us. What they hear from God has as much to do with them as with God. Abraham’s fear of releasing his son might have transformed the call for his son to “go with God”…into feeling like God wanted him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. So Abraham sets out to do it. Surely most of us have done the same. We actively hurt ourselves to prove our fearful view of the world is correct.
What was the “test” the Bible tells us was in process? Was it to see if Abraham would kill his son in obedience to God? That’s the traditional reading. Reinforced by the angel’s message that causes the last-minute stay of the knife: now I know you fear me.
But what if the message is in the last part of the message: “Because you have not withheld your son, I will make sure your children flourish.” What if this story is a complicated interplay between Abraham’s fear of releasing control over his son and his desire to obey God? A hard-fought struggle that ends in his breakthrough moment when he realizes this situation he has set up cannot be the correct course of action. And so he hears God rejoicing because he has come to the place he can trust God with his son.
How do we all release those we love to God
I don’t know. But we all, ultimately, must grapple with releasing those we love to God. Because we can’t and don’t control what happens to them. We can gently set them into the stream and work with the wisdom we receive from God to help their lives be the best it can be. Or we can fight, obstreperous, and demand that we get to decide. The latter won’t work out well. We are too ignorant and have too little control over that stream.
Abraham and Isaac, how we hear God, releasing those we love to God, the purpose of baptism
emma
Thank you Ellen. Too many lately we’ve had to “release to God”. As I move toward the end of this life myself (as we all are), seems many of my friends are released much to soon, I still have things I want to say to them. Always, there are words we wish we’d said. My late husband died in my arms, and I was so caught up in easing his suffering that I forgot the last words I wanted to say to him: “I love you, Godspeed.”
I had it all planned, but pain got in the way and he left this world in a way I was not ready for. But I know he is always with me in some way, in the books and messages and memories I hold dear. We are never ready. When our friend Suzanne Henley died, I could not imagine this life without her in it – her larger than life creative self is not gone – she is always here in those things her hands created, either in her words or her art. In those they leave behind, the spouses, families & friends, the impact of their souls will always be there. That is something we will never release, held deep in our hearts The imprint of their spirit.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
I am sitting with this, Emma. So much pain and suffering.”We are never ready.” Such true, heartbreaking words.
And every time I type a blog post I think of Suzanne: check your grammar, Ellen, or she’ll return and rap you on the head.
Joanne Corey
I think I lectio divina-ed this blog post a bit too much, because, instead of reflecting on Abraham and Isaac, I can’t get my mind away from the early part of the post about choosing baptism.
I baptized both of my daughters as young infants, which is Catholic tradition, but it was a difficult decision each time. It wasn’t about giving them over to God, though; despite the theological underpinnings of the Catholic sacraments, I felt that my children were already children of God, whether or not water was blessed and poured and formulas pronounced over them. It was more that I knew that I was baptizing them into a church that would wound them, would not grant them the full measure of human dignity that God had already bestowed on them, would limit their role in the Church because of their gender. I knew it would happen to them because it had happened and was happening to me, no matter how much we listened to the Spirit and advocated for change.
Sadly, I was correct about my daughters’ wounds. At this point, one has left established religion behind, whether permanently or not only God knows. I stubbornly persist, carving out as safe a space for myself as I can for as long as I can but realizing I may not be able to do so indefinitely. Still, I think that I was a better example to my daughters as a struggling, progressive Catholic than I would have been as a Catholic-masquerading-as-(insert Christian denomination here).
I wish, though, that we had been dealing with Abraham and Isaac this past Sunday. We are apparently in a different place in the lectionary. Somehow, these readings: 2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a, Rom 6:3-4, 8-11, and Mt 10:37-42 (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070223.cfm) morphed into an anti-trans message. I was visiting another parish; this never would have happened at my home parish. It’s horrifying, though, that many of the US bishops would have agreed with that priest, ignoring that Jesus never turned away anyone who was oppressed or vulnerable or who had a sincere heart.
So, yes, the struggle begun at baptism continues…
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Joanne, I never thought of that. Me, who deeply resented as a young girl that I wasn’t allowed to carry the cross down the aisle as acolytes (I always thought, not even the measly flag!) How hard that choice must have been for you. An to know you were right. I’m so sorry about the anti-trans message. A re-injury. Continuing. (Sometimes I think that’s what Jesus meant by forgiving 7 X 7: the same person (institution) would commit the same transgression over and over, and we were called to forgive it over and over. Thank you for sharing your journey.
Joanne Corey
Thanks, Ellen. I’m grateful that your denomination has chosen to recognize girls and women as full participants, although sexism still exists in certain quarters.
I also appreciate your reference to infinite forgiveness, even of institutions. I admit that the sins that are heaviest on my own heart are the social ones, which are beyond my power to mend but for which I bear responsibility as a member of society, US citizen, Catholic, etc. The first step toward reconciliation is the recognition of the sin and the harm it has caused our relationship with God, with others, and with creation. That the Catholic church, after centuries, still does not understand the harm it has done and continues to do to girls and women and to people who express their gender/sexuality in ways other than the male/female procreative one makes forgiveness possible but not true reconciliation.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
💔